Interview: Gabriel Rucker of Le Pigeon on Portland, good restaurants and creative freedom

Last night, Chris Cosentino and his cohorts at Incanto opened their doors on a Tuesday night, when Incanto is usually closed. The reason was a guest chef dinner with Gabriel Rucker, the 32-year-old chef/owner of Portland restaurants Le Pigeon and Little Bird.

Rucker was actually in town for the San Francisco 49ers/Seattle Seahawks game on Sunday, a gift for his father. Rucker grew up in Napa, and maintains close ties to the Bay Area — especially in the sports realm.

Since he was in town for the game, he decided to do an event at Omnivore Books, in conjunction with his new cookbook, Le Pigeon: Cooking at the Dirty Bird. And after one thing led to another, he cooked for a sold-out audience with the Incanto crew last night.

In between events, Rucker and I chatted about a number of topics.

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The Cookbook.

PL: Le Pigeon is so unique. In your opinion, what makes a good restaurant?

GR: To me, what makes a good restaurant is that, one, you’re comfortable in it. And two, that you have a good time while you’re there. People used to go out to dinner and a movie. Now, it’s like going out to dinner is the movie.

Especially in this town. And I’m sure Portland is similar.

Yeah, I want a place that is relaxed, that doesn’t feel too stuffy, and that when you walk out, you’re like, “That was fun.” And hopefully you’re full. The food should be really good, not a place where the chef is trying to show you what they can do — but is cooking for the customer.

That said, it’s probably fair to say that you and Le Pigeon have your own style. How do you view that, and how did you come into your style?

If you’re a good chef — and you want to stay present — your style is constantly evolving. If you just “come into” your style, and you stick with it, the food world changes quickly around you. But I don’t think Le Pigeon is on the forefront. I’m not pushing any boundaries. I’m just having fun with what we do, but we pull from a lot of places for each dish.

What about Portland makes Le Pigeon what it is?

The people. It’s a really young city, and it’s cheap and affordable, so you have a lot of young people who can afford to open a restaurant. I was 25 when I started there. I didn’t just buy the restaurant; I got hired as the chef of an existing place that wasn’t doing well. When it started to become successful, I had the ability to buy in. You have a lot of people who can D.I.Y., young people who own businesses. Also, the city is pretty embracing. If you’re not trying to be too pretentious, the city is pretty embracing. I’ve had that experience, at least.

And you know, it’s cold and it rains a lot. People want to be in a cozy restaurant. Le Pigeon is a very warm-feeling restaurant. We’re in the kitchen, having fun, interacting with the guests. Sometimes you go to dinner and the kitchen might be open, but the cooks are just looking down. If you’re going to be sitting around the counter, you might as well be having a good time. That’s part of the experience.

Speaking to that fun environment, what’s your mentality in being a boss?

Well, it’s definitely changed a lot in the seven-plus years. Everyone works long hours, everyone works really hard, and we have a lot of people who come to stage, so I want people to have a good time. I want people to have creative freedom and be able to put a little of themselves into their job. But I also really want people to be responsible. I try not to micromanage too much. I let people do their thing, and you know, sometimes it’s OK if people f—- up, because then you learn.

Gabriel Rucker breaks down an animal. Go Giants. Photo: Le Pigeon

Do you get branded as a guts/offal guy like Chris Cosentino sometimes does?

Kind of. It used to be a little more so, when you talk about my style. It used to be that we tried to make sure our menu was really offal-heavy. Now, it’s kind of whatever I feel like making. He does that, too. He doesn’t do it just to do it. He does it because that’s what he genuinely likes. Put it this way: There’s nothing I wouldn’t put on my menu because I don’t think it would sell. My menu is small: six appetizers and six entrees. At Le Pigeon, we don’t really do specials; the menu just changes and rotates all the time. I don’t plan my menu by saying we’ve got to have as many body parts as possible.

It’s just what I’m interested in cooking that day, or that week.

What ingredients or techniques are you excited about now?

There are a couple dishes I’m excited about. One I brought down: the foie gras course. It’s a foie torchon that we roll in sesame seed and bonito flakes and serve with an unagi salad with different forms of apple and salsify. A fun dish we’ve never done before at Le Pigeon is we’re now serving a half-crab that we fry in a wok with Thai basil pesto, pickled chiles and preserved lemon. We serve that with a curry and rooster risotto. I just put that on the menu the night before I left town.

How do you make that risotto?

Braised rooster — or capon — in kaffir lime leaf and coconut milk. We shred it and make a curry and crab stock, and finish the risotto with kohlrabi and peanuts. It came out really good … That’s one of those examples of cooking what I would want to eat.

It’s nice that you don’t feel bound by anything.

Yeah, it’s always been that way. I started having creative freedom in the kitchen when I was really young. In my second job, I was responsible for the pantry items and desserts. I was only 20 then. I never did the thing where you stage around Europe or go peel garlic at the French Laundry. I didn’t have that foundation of people telling me what to do. I flew by the seat of my pants. It would’ve been nice in a certain sense to have a little foundation, but it’s also a blessing that I don’t have any ideas that someone has shoved in my head. It’s just trial, and error, and free thinking.

Why write a book now?

Well [laughing] it took two years. We got approached by Aaron [Wehner] at Ten Speed quite a few years ago. Not approached, but basically, “Hey have you ever thought about it?” We had, but it seemed like a s—ton of work, which it is. It seemed like too much work at the time. And then in 2011, I won the James Bear Rising Star award and we thought that maybe it was a good time.

We were shoved into the national spotlight, so if we’re going to do it, let’s do it. Working with Meredith Erickson, who did the Joe Beef cookbook, too, was a blessing … She really had a big part in making the book what it is. Her vision was to give the book a sense of Portland. If it would have been up to me alone, it would have been, “Here’s pretty food on a plate.” She really pulled out of me that sense of Portland you get from the book. Portland’s such a cool city that’s on the map for so many people, food-wise, but there isn’t really a book that is Portland, Portland. That’s what we tried to do.

The important thing is to keep it going. Portland has been getting an amazing amount of food interest, but the real trick — just like at my restaurant — is how to maintain that interest. It’s not necessarily a matter of more restaurants opening up, but good ones, and with people that are passionate.

How do you do that?

Making sure that people have that good experience when they do come, so that they are excited about their trip to the city. People come to Portland to eat food, and eating at a restaurant in Portland is nice because you get that feeling that there are no big corporations running the restaurants. They’re not cold. They’re very warm.

Do you feel a personal responsibility to keep that interest and momentum going?

Yeah, we have two restaurants. The chef of Little Bird, who was my old sous chef at Le Pigeon, and the sous chef at Little Bird, who was a longtime line cook at Le Pigeon, are showing up here [for the Incanto dinner]. I flew them down to cook with me here.

But to open up more restaurants? I’m not interested in that right now. I have a young baby and a two-year-old, and I feel like it’s more important to do what you do really well than to do a lot of different things kind of well.